The popularity of cable television has grown rapidly over the past two decades. This popularity has been driven in part by the improved reception quality offered by cable systems and by the increased variety of programming available to consumers.
The cable television industry has traditionally marketed and sold its programs to consumers in bulk, such as continuous feed broadcast and long-term subscriptions to movie channels. For instance, cable television may be sold as a basic package of channels, which may then be augmented by additional channels or sub-packages of channels, e.g., premium packages containing one or more additional channels. The television industry generally does not sell its programming on a unit per unit basis, such as the ordering of one channel. That is, consumers are generally not able to pick and choose which cable channels they want and incur charges on a per channel basis, a feature which is often referred to as ala carte pricing. Thus, consumers are forced to subscribe to packages that may include one hundred or more channels, only a few of which may be of interest to individual consumers.
Consumers, however, may in some cases prefer ala carte pricing because it may reduce costs and allow consumers to be more selective in their viewing.